NEW DELHI: Chief Election Commissioner Gyanesh Kumar on Thursday announced the conduct of Special Intensive Revision (SIR) Phase-III of electoral rolls across 16 States and three Union Territories (UTs) and appealed to all electorate to enthusiastically participate in the exercise and fill their enumeration forms.
He said the revision aims to ensure that only eligible voters are included in the electoral rolls, while excluding ineligible entries.
The Election Commission of India (ECI) said in an official statement that the Phase III exercise will cover nearly 36 crore electors in a phased manner and has been aligned with the house-listing component of the ongoing Census to optimise deployment of field staff.
The Commission added that the revision will cover the entire country in this phase except Himachal Pradesh and the Union Territories of Jammu and Kashmir and Ladakh, where the schedule will be announced separately due to weather conditions in snow-bound areas and ongoing census operations.
The states and UTs where the exercise will be undertaken include Delhi, Odisha, Mizoram, Sikkim, Manipur, Uttarakhand, Andhra Pradesh, Arunachal Pradesh, Haryana, Chandigarh, Telangana, Punjab, Karnataka, Meghalaya, Maharashtra, Jharkhand, Nagaland, Tripura and the Union Territory of Dadra and Nagar Haveli and Daman and Diu.
According to the EC, during Phase 3 of the exercise, more than 3.94 lakh Booth Level Officers (BLOs) will conduct door-to-door visits. The ECI also noted that in the earlier two phases of SIR, covering 13 states and UTs, over 59 crore electors were covered with the support of more than 6.3 lakh BLOs and 9.2 lakh BLAs.
The schedule for the exercise has been structured in multiple stages, including training, enumeration, draft publication, claims and objections, and final roll publication for each state and UT.
The Special Intensive Revision has already been completed in Bihar, West Bengal, Tamil Nadu, Kerala, Puducherry, Uttar Pradesh, Rajasthan, Madhya Pradesh, Gujarat, Chhattisgarh, Goa, Andaman and Nicobar Islands and Lakshadweep.
A separate “special revision” exercise was also conducted in Assam.